LET THEM EAT CAKE

It's good news week.

One of my many guilty pleasures when visiting a typical fête is to check out the homemade cake stall. The homemade cakes invariably have a dollop more cream, or an extra thick layer of icing, or maybe one more spoon of fruit for luck than the soulless cakes you find in the shops.

Of course the reason for this is that cakes made for shop sale are regulated and subject to stringent quality and hygiene control so they contain the minimum ingredients that the price dictates.

No such limits on the home-made variety until the bureaucrats started to interfere. Suddenly kids were banned from selling their Mum's cupcakes to classmates for charity because Mum didn't have a food hygiene certificate and doubts were raised about the 'legality' of selling cakes at the local fête.

Relax. Chill. All is well. The FSA (Food Standards Agency) has clarified the issue. It states that 'There is no rule banning the sale of homemade cakes at school fêtes or other Community events'. 

Crumbs. Who'd have thought they had common sense? You can have your cake, and eat it with a cherry on the top.

YOU SHALL HAVE A FISHY ON A LITTLE DISHY

I presume that, rather like those films of lion prides devouring their kill, my caveman forebear having dragged a dead animal back to 43 Cavern Mews, would sit around with his family and after saying Grace would begin with " I'll slash and tear dear ". 

No doubt he would then proceed to carve open the poor creature's belly with his Swiss Army flint shard and pass around pieces of gut, heart and other organs, dripping with delicious warm blood saving the best bits such as those tasty eyeballs for himself. 

In time though, he discovered the Aga and suddenly cooking one's meat became all the vogue with raw meat meals relegated to those occasions when fast food was all he had time for.

I'm sure you would agree with me that eating cooked food was progress. For one thing, we'd never have discovered omelettes if it wasn't for cooking, nor would we have the delights of pizza and there would have been no Macdonalds. Come to think of it... No, I'm sure that cooking was progress.

I was reminded of how far we have come from our caveman days when I read a cookery article about fish dishes in the paper with the customary photo of the completed meal. It was served on the plate with not only its tail intact but also with its eyes, slightly dazed admittedly, still looking at the diner with an unvoiced 'How could you?'

I know I'm a bit squeamish but why on Earth would we want to be reminded that we are about to eat a creature? I mean when we have roast lamb, we don't put a little fluffy lamb's tail on the side of the plate do we?

I rest my knife and fork.

FAIR ENOUGH

My wife has an amazing skill. She can enter a clean and tidy kitchen, prepare the simplest of meals, then leave the kitchen looking like a team of chefs and sous-chefs have just come to the end of a busy shift. Every pot and pan will have been used, food will be on the work surfaces, on the floor and usually on the walls. I'm sure the reason her diet is working so well is that so little of her meal actually makes it to the plate!

After breakfast, she turns her back on the debris in the kitchen and sets off for work. Curiously, an amazing thing happens while she is out. We are visited by the dishwasher fairy, a large hairy, fairy who magically puts dirty dishes into the dishwasher, washes all the pans and cleans the surfaces. Yet somehow, when my wife returns from work, she seems not to notice that we have had a visitor. It's almost as if she expected the fairy to appear and do its thing.

This may seem a little one-sided but I can assure you that it isn't. You see, I too am visited by a fairy. My visitor is a beautiful, sylph-like creature who periodically removes my dirty clothes from the basket, washes them clean, sprinkles them with stardust and leaves them in a tidy pile on the bed for me to put away.

So we have two fairies who visit this house and as far as I'm concerned that's ......... fairy nuff.